A recent U.S. court ruling over a fight between Argentina and its creditors on Wall Street will increase global poverty by making it easier for "vulture funds" to seize the assets of indebted nations, according to anti-debt campaigners who are urging the U.S. government to overturn the decision.

When Argentina defaulted on its national debt in 2001, U.S. hedge funds swooped in to buy the nation's bonds at pennies on the dollar, confident they would eventually prevail in the U.S. legal system and force the country to pay out in full.

By the end of 2011, the United States had elite special operations forces in around 120 of the 192 countries recognised by the United Nations, with U.S. military bases in more than half of the world's nation-states.

Through its ties with Venezuela and other nations in Latin America, Iran is building an anti-U.S. alliance in the Western Hemisphere that poses a direct, imminent threat to the United States, an influential U.S. lawmaker said Thursday.

Its economy hurting from sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been making a show of bolstering its ties to Latin America, with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this past week making his sixth official visit to the region since taking office in 2005.

Hundreds of protesters, dozens outfitted in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, took to the streets outside the White House on Wednesday to demonstrate against torture and indefinite detention on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the U.S. prison facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Hundreds of people gathered today outside a U.S. military base where evidence against Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking classified information to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, is being presented before a military judge for the first time since Manning's arrest.

Claims by neo-conservative and right-wingers that Iranian influence in Latin America poses a growing security threat to the United States seem exaggerated, at best, with recent allegations that Tehran sought the help of an Iranian- American used-car salesman in a high-profile assassination plot.

U.S. citizens of Cuban descent are once again free to travel to Cuba and send an unlimited amount of money to their relatives on the island, but for the most part U.S. policy toward the communist nation hasn't changed under President Barack Obama.

Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa says he will not renew the United States military's lease on an Air Force base in Manta, a move viewed by some in Washington as evidence of a growing push back against U.S. intervention in Latin America.